Private View: Saturday 10 February 6-9pm, including a live looping performance by Tony Tooke using traditional Indian instruments

A photographic journey, from London to India and the Americas, ultimately resting at the shelter on Margate sands. Eleanor Marriott's images explore themes inherent in The Waste Land – from holiness to desolation and fragmentation; and of water symbolising both life and death. Her work echoes Eliot's questioning of the value of progress through her images of places including Cuba and rural India, which are part-frozen in the past, in juxtaposition with those of more economically advanced Western cities.

From washed up bodies on the floodplains of the Ganges, to the loneliness of existence in a society that does not see you – some photographs may sit uneasily with the viewer. Their purpose is to elicit empathy with Eliot's shoring up against the ruins, while other images will bring an essence of 'shantih' or peace.

The exhibition at Pie Factory Margate will be accompanied by music composed and performed by Tony Tooke using traditional Indian instruments.

Eleanor's photographic career began with an exhibition of her Latin American images in London. This led to further solo London exhibitions, including several focusing on Cuba.

In 2011 Eleanor taught photography to teenagers in Varanasi, India. While there she was invited to photograph the sadhus (India's holy men) resident in an ashram on the banks of the Ganges. More recently Eleanor has spent time in Paris and Rome, working as a still photographer for a documentary concerning the Italian director Federico Fellini. Eleanor has been photographing Margate life since 2014; she now lives and works as a photographer there.

This is an independent event organised by members of the public in response to Turner Contemporary's invitation to create an event or activity inspired by The Waste Land, T.S. Eliot's legacy, and Turner Contemporary's exhibition Journeys with 'The Waste Land'.